The Media Back Obama
Its activist role has been the single constant in this eternal election.
Dorothy Rabinowitz
The WSJ
October 9, 2008

Both time and events have dimmed those defining moments that early on revealed the difference between the two presidential aspirants. Not only did the financial crisis arrive but so, in her uproarious way, did Sarah Palin. Tuesday’s debate between two candidates paralyzed by caution altered nothing. It was a relief, of course, not to hear about Sen. McCain’s record as a « maverick » — a word that would, in a merciful world, be banned from public discourse for the next decade. It was too much to expect Barack Obama to spare us further recitals of the McCain-Bush connection.

The single constant in the eternal election remains the media, whose activist role no one will seriously dispute. To point out the prevailing (with honorable exceptions) double standard of reporting so favorable to Mr. Obama by now feels superfluous — much like talking about the weather. The same holds true for all those reports pointing to Mr. Obama’s heroic status outside the United States — not to mention the cascade of press analyses warning that if he fails to win election, the cause will surely be racism.

None of this means that the media’s role will go unremembered — who will forget MSNBC news, voice of the Obama campaign? Never has a presidential election produced more fodder for the making and breaking — or tainting — of reputations.

The same is true of news sources making far greater claims to fairness. So it was only slightly startling to read a New York Times forecast (Sept. 22) about the presidential debate to come in which reporter Katharine Q. Seelye declared, » . . . Mr. Obama should expect Mr. McCain to question his credentials for the job at every turn — and to distort his views, as Mr. Romney insisted he did. »

That first debate brought the usual legions of commentators — among them CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour. John McCain, she pointed out, had stumbled over Ahmadinejad’s name, and as he was supposed to be the expert on foreign policy, it made her giggle.

« That’s not fair — people make mistakes all the time, » Anderson Cooper shot back. But Ms. Amanpour, whose capacity for sustained levels of bombast is one of the wonders of the world, was having none of it.

She would go on to raise the theme so central to the Obama campaign, and held, as revealed truth, by the politically progressive everywhere — that the U.S., fallen low in the eyes of the world, is now in dire need of moral salvation. Everywhere she went in America, Ms. Amanpour declared, she found « desperate Americans » — desperate, that is, about the low esteem in which the country was held, desperate to have a president who would lift America up.

Mr. Obama could not have said it better himself. He is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world — and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.

It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we’ve lost face among the nations of the world — presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones — his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence — is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain.

Sen. Obama is not responsible for the political culture, but he is in good part its product. Which is perhaps how it happened that in his 20 years in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright — passionate proponent of the view of America as the world’s leading agent of evil and injustice — he found nothing strange or alienating. To the contrary, when Rev. Wright’s screeds began rolling out on televisions all over the country, Mr. Obama’s first response was to mount a militant defense and charge that Rev. Wright had been taken out of context, « cut into snippets. » This he continued to do until it became untenable. Then came the subject-changing speech on race. Such defining moments tell more than all the talk of Sen. Obama’s association with the bomb-planting humanist, William Ayers.

These sharp differences between the candidates as to who we are as a nation may not seem, now, as potent an issue for voters as the economy, but they should not be underestimated. This clash — not the ones on abortion or gay marriage — is the root of the real culture war to play out in November.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board

I am not trying to sound trite, but honestly I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

What happened to our jaded media who looked for the fire when they even had a glimpse of smoke? What happened to the media who wanted every single detail of a blue dress and a naughty cigar?

As much as I thought all of the insidious coverage of that Presidential misstep was a bit much, I would take that any day over this overly-apathetic, take-any-answer-at-face-value media we are dealing with now.

Come on media. A sitting president enjoying a peaceful and prosperous eight years has a little fun with an intern, and you went after every last, salacious detail of each and every phone call and encounter.

Now in a time of war and financial meltdown, we have a relatively unknown candidate for the highest office in the land, who keeps fluffing off reports of radical associations as if he is swatting a mosquito away, and you just accept his nonsensical answers at face value.

Never would I have thought that the American media would let an unknown politician running for President get away with having « Community Organizer » as a main feature of his short resume and the seemingly endless radical connections that keep emerging.

Let’s recap some of what Barrack Obama seems to have skated passed the American media — and by default — much of the American public.

First comes the twenty-year association with a very racist, radical and politically-incorrect Reverend Wright, who is on tape ranting and raving about the American government, white people, Hillary Clinton and many American ideals. His extreme, radical bias against the American government, the American Dream and white people are clearly depicted.

Even though Obama clearly spent 20 years sitting in the pews of Reverend Wright’s church and has mentioned him as his spiritual guide on several occasions, the media allowed him to escape relatively unscathed with the announcement that he is leaving his church. This appeased the media and seemed to appease the masses.

Who cares about what it says about his judgment and philosophy to have sat in his pews for 20 years and have used him as his spiritual guide? They said, « Let’s get back to the issues. »

And so they did.

Then the alternative media started wondering, « What exactly is a Community Organizer, and how does that prepare someone for presidency »? That is a great question, but the mainstream media ignored that question entirely and made it sound like he was some do-gooder who was providing community service.

Anyone at all who bothered to look into what exactly Barrack Obama did as a Community Organizer would have found that he was involved with radical organizations, such as ACORN. Once it came out that ACORN is in frequent trouble for voter fraud and has been caught shaking down mortgage executives to offer bad loans to risky home buyers, his campaign manager says that he didn’t work for ACORN. He worked for Project Vote.

The media just left it at that. They didn’t bother to report that Project Vote has always been an ACORN affiliate project, and that Barrack Obama did, in fact, serve as ACORN’s attorney at least in one Motor Voter Law case. They would also have discovered that he acted as a trainer, who trained young people to be radicals.

Instead, the media ignored that he addressed ACORN’s Convention recently and all of the other facts mentioned above, and let the story end with the bogus explanation about Project Vote having been his employer, not ACORN.

Early in his bid for President, it came out that Barrack Obama bought property next door to his good pal, Tony Rezko, who got it for him at $300,000 under market value. Did I mention Rezko is a felon who is most likely on his way to prison for shaking down vendors who wanted to do business with the State of Illinois? I wonder where he learned that tactic? I am sure it wasn’t Harvard Business School. I would bet he learned that in some Marxist textbook.
So after that connection gets swept under the rug and dismissed as John McCain’s attempt to avoid the real issues, yet another radical association emerges – Bill Ayers.

This guy started a radical, anti-American, terrorist group called the Weather Underground and bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon, the New York City Police Headquarters, and the home of a Judge presiding over a trial of another radical group, the Black Panthers.

It comes out that Barrack Obama launched his political career in this despicable terrorist’s living room, sat on some boards with him, collaborated on education projects with him and who knows what else. I wish the media would find out what else. Since when would they let a story like this go?

I’ll tell you when – since they decided they were in the bag for Barrack Obama.

Even though Obama and his advisors keep changing their stories about his connection with Ayers, which would indicate to anyone that there is a lie hidden within the spin, the media has not challenged one single statement that has come from Obama’s camp.

There is a chance that a man with a history of radical, Anti-American connections will be our next President, and we are going to treat these reports of his connections as a McCain campaign ploy to distract the public from the real issues.

I cannot think of an issue more pressing than the political agenda and theoretical basis of our next President and Commander-in-Chief. Can you? Radicalism and Socialism have defined him and might soon define our country if the media doesn’t wake up and report the facts so that the American people can see things as they really are – not as they are packaged.

Barrack Obama has packaged himself as a Patriotic American looking to serve the people and help the « middle class. » Frighteningly, what he might really be is an Anti-American, Socialist, who is looking to own the « middle class. »

You think I am exaggerating? Thanks to the mainstream media, you might not know that Barrack Obama sought after and won the New Party’s endorsement in 1996.

The New Party is a Socialist, Left-Wing faction of the Democratic Party who disdained Clinton’s middle-of-the-road policies. Barrack Obama is now running as a Centrist, despite all of the evidence, including his voting record, that shows that he is as Left-Wing as they come.

Like I said, let’s unwrap the packaging and get to the heart of this man before he takes the helm of a country in middle of two wars and a devastating economic crisis.